Los Jardines de Plata was beautiful year round, but particularly when lovely visitors made an exploration of the grounds necessary. If Felipe had learned anything from Sonora, it was some basic magic theory. That aside, he’d learned that adventures with the best of friends and the nicest of people were the best and most important way to pass time. As such, he’d taken great care to plan absolutely nothing for Zara’s visit.
Sitting on a bench under a window that looked in on the room Zara would be arriving in, a book untouched beside him, Felipe was waiting for his guest’s visit with an eager expression. His father had at first tried to convince him that it was uncouth to look so eager, and that he might make Zara uncomfortable, but Felipe’s mother insisted otherwise.
“Be yourself,” Julieta had said. “Show her who you are.”
Felipe was not sure exactly who that meant he was supposed to show Zara, but his friend had a way of making everything seem a little more like it made sense, so he was hoping it would work out. As such, when the sounds of her arrival drew his attention, he practically sprung to his feet. A beaming grin made its way to his face briefly before he muted it into something more appropriate for his posture. Then, he awaited her approach. He’d made a point of not sitting inside, next to the fire place where she would be coming in, but couldn’t help responding to the commotion from indoors.
He turned in time to hear his father greet Zara before making his way around the bench, back to the path, and through the open doorway to see her himself. He grinned, forgetting his words for a moment, and just took in the sight of his dear friend in Los Jardines de Plata. It was going to be a very good day.
It was sort of odd to think that you were waking up in your own bed, getting up and taking a shower and brushing your teeth, and that practically as soon as you were done getting ready, you were going to be in Mexico. Even though Zara had grown up with such conveniences all around her, they still delighted her. She supposed part of it was seeing it filtered through her mother’s eyes, knowing it wasn’t that easy for everyone (although she was also starting to appreciate long car journeys, because as convenient as Floo and portkeys were, you couldn’t play the license plate game or listen to CDs whilst you did it, and she was starting to realise that the journey itself could feel like part of the trip, not just what you did when you got there).
The trip this time was a little longer because they couldn’t use their own Floo connection for an international trip. Or rather they only could if she went to a transportation hub in Mexico instead of straight to the de Matteos because her paperwork needed to be checked at one end or the other, and her parents much preferred the thought of her arriving direct to her friend’s house. Once she was all checked through, she took a pinch of powder, and tossed into the flames, stating the name and address clearly, the way Felipe had taught her, and hoping her pronunciation was accurate.
She stumbled slightly as she exited the fireplace, blinking a couple of times as her vision stopped spinning and her eyes adjusted to the different light level where she had emerged. She thought she probably did not look particularly elegant, but equally she thought that requiring elegance of someone who’d just been spun across countries by a fireplace was a bit much. She was sure some people managed it, but she was not one of them. Given that the only guidance she’d been given on clothes was to dress for hot weather and to bring things she didn’t mind getting messy, she suspected being elegant was not going to be a big priority, regardless of how fancy Felipe’s life seemed every time she got a glimpse into it. For the journey, she’d worn dark linen pants that wouldn’t show soot stains too badly, and a red cotton top with a white floral pattern. It was what she thought of as one of her ‘fancy tops’ - a bit better than a plain old t-shirt or things with slogans, and the kind that you might wear to a church picnic or something where it mattered to look nice but not too dressed up.
She worked her way through the helloes with his parents, thanking them again for having her, and using what she called church manners - watching how she talked and trying to be the formal version of polite that she’d been taught, blending it with any particular things she’d picked up from Felipe about how she should adapt that to his family. Thus she did not immediately ask ‘Where’s Felipe?’ even though it was what she was thinking, and she found it a bit odd and intimidating that his parents were just there without him. However, she soon spotted him peering through a doorway, and he was smiling at her, so her own face broke into an answering grin.
“You look nice,” Felipe said before backtracking and stammering out a second attempt. “I mean that it’s nice to see you,” he said. He was glad that Zara’s eyes were on him and not his parents smirking at each other behind her back. “I hope your journey was pleasant?”
More than anything, he wanted to run to her and hug her. However, that would be impolite and quite possibly unwanted. Instead, he settled for smiling sheepishly at his friend and waiting until they were away from the oppressive, albeit loving, gaze of his family to relax a bit more.
It’s allowed to be both you know, Zara thought, as Felipe told her she looked nice and then hastily backtracked, turning it into a different compliment. She decided not to venture that outloud lest she sounded big-headed, though really she just wanted him to feel comfortable saying what he thought.
“Thanks. It’s good to see you too. I’m excited to be here,” she smiled. “And yes, the journey was fine. Great views,” she joked. “What’s first?”
Ilefonso laughed at Zara’s joke and put an arm around his wife. “Yes, Los Jardines de Plata is a hot tourist destination this year, I’m sure.” He chuckled moreso at Julieta’s groan and eyeroll than anything else.
“Go have fun,” she said to Zara and Felipe. “Just be back in time for dinner and make sure you wash up before you sit down to eat. We’ll take your things to your room,” she said the last to Zara, although the comment about dinner was clearly directed at her son, who nodded in agreement.
As his parents left the room, Felipe crossed it to greet Zara from up close. “First is . . . well, whatever you’d like. I thought you might like a tour, but I didn’t know if you’d rather I lead it or you. It’s more exciting if you’d like to lead it, and I’ll explain stuff on the way,” he offered, trying to make a planned thing a little spontaneous too. “What do you prefer?”
Zara considered Felipe’s offer. She had sort of imagined being the guest and being shown around. She also wanted to see Felipe’s world through his own eyes. Still, that wasn’t off the table if he was offering to tell her as they went, and it was also exciting to feel like an explorer, and getting to discover a new place on her own terms.
“Ooh, yes getting to know this place sounds like a good plan, and I think I’d like to wander, so long as I’m getting to hear stories as we go. And you’ll let me know if anything’s off limits,” she assumed out loud. “Sooo, where were you before you came to get me?” she asked, tracing her steps back towards where he’d appeared from.
Felipe grinned as he followed Zara. Well, followed her lead. In reality, he was walking side by side with her, which felt like a very special place to walk. It also felt like a path he’d never taken before, despite having walked this way a thousand times before.
“I was sitting on a bench here in the shade,” he said, gesturing to the stone carved seat as they approached it. “And I was trying to sort out the mathematics behind calculating speed of Floo travel,” he added, this time gesturing to the book that had gone forgotten for longer than he was willing to admit. “There’s no good way to do it, because it’s not clear whether the person Flooing experiences times like the people outside of that system, and the people outside the system can’t be there both when the person leaves and when they arrive.”
It was a leatherbound journal with paper full of scribbles and notes on many topics like this, and he picked it up as he spoke, offering it to her. He wasn’t normally one to share such things, particularly as it seemed self-indulgent to do so, but he suspected Zara was interested in life here, and this was part of his life. Zara acccepted the notebook, flicking through a couple of pages with a smile. It reminded her, more than anything, of Bertie’s spy codes - pages and pages of things which she was sure were very intelligent and meaningful to their owner, but which were going way above her head.
“Interesting puzzle,” she acknowledged. She had never really thought about it. It felt… like you went fast, when you Floo’d. But that was about it. She wasn’t sure she’d considered her ‘experience of time’ within the fireplace.
“This is just a bench. I don’t know who carved it or how it got here,” Felipe added, frowning at the bench, “The tree, however, is one of my favorites. It’s the national tree of El Salvador, and they call it Maquilíshuat. In Costa Rica, they call it Roble de Sabana, or savannah oak. It’s a Tabebuia rosea.”
He rattled on about the tree as eager eyes adored its bright pink blossoms, lack of leaves, and sheer mass. The trunk had a diameter easily over a foot, and it whole of it climbed well above the tiled roof, into the sky some seventy-five feet above them.
“And what do I call it?” Zara asked curiously, regarding the Tree of Many Names, “What do you call it?” she clarified her question, wanting to label it the same thing that her friend did. It was fun watching Felipe light up, as he always did when he talked about gardening stuff. She was pretty sure this tree got him more excited than his interactions with most people or the thought of getting presents at Christmas or anything that typically made twelve year olds excited. He was an odd duck, but in a very sweet way.
Felipe considered for a moment. "Probably Carlos or something," he decided. He kept his face straight for a moment before looking at Zara with gleaming eyes and a smirk.
“Pleased to meet you, Carlos,” Zara laughed, offering the tree a bow, and feeling a lot easier in herself. She thought there were going to be a lot of things that threw her off here - she was worried about not getting things quite right, and her usual first impulse regarding trees was not about whether she should respect their age and majesty but whether she could climb them. The way Felipe had talked about this tree had made it seem like that would have been a disrespectful thing to do, even if the tree hadn’t been entirely too bare around the bottom for it to be possible. But it seemed like there was also room to be a little silly without anyone being offended.
“How long can we keep walking from the house before we stop being is Los Jardines de Plata?” she asked. “And then what does it become?” Because the way Felipe talked about it, she was never sure whether the name was his house, the grounds, or the village - or whether those were all the same thing anyway.
Felipe grinned. It was easy to see how Zara fit into this world and into his world when she was like this. She seemed so at ease, but she was still conscientious of the world around her and that made Felipe feel a little less like he needed to be.
“So Los Jardines de Plata means the silver gardens basically,” he began, leading Zara around the side of the house. It was more of a patio to her, probably, as there were no windows, just large archways and the room inside was open to the outside world. This would’ve been normal for the muggle families too, but Felipe’s parents had also charmed it to be a little less vulnerable to changes in the weather.
As he spoke about the difference between the estate and fields - Los Jardines de Plata - versus the village beyond, they cleared the corner of the building and rounded on a second bench, this one posed to provide a view over the edge of a hill. The expanse of Los Jardines de Plata fields were rolled out for them and the peaking village buildings made Felipe blush.
“That’s Cuidad de Matteo,” he said. “It’s named after my family.” Looking down at the grass, he took a moment to formulate his thoughts before speaking again. “Does that bother you?” he asked quietly.
Zara surveyed the scene in front of her. She was going to get to explore all of this! Her mind was wandering down groves of mangoes and into secret hideaways, thinking of new flavours she would get to try, when Felipe's surprisingly serious question pulled her back.
She considered it. Having a village named after your family was pretty extra. And it wasn't the first hint that she'd got the impression that Felipe's family was like... a major deal around here. It was a lifestyle that felt beyond her comprehension, certainly. But did it bother her? That question took that further. Her first instinct was to say 'no' because Felipe was her friend and his family were nice and why should she let this change that? She tried to dig a little deeper into what it meant that his life was so different to hers. She wondered if that was going to be an issue at any point. It created a culture gap, certainly, as much as their different countries of origin did. She wondered as well whether there was more to his question than that... Latin America had its own set of social issues when it came to colonialisation, and the way people had used and abused their fellow humans. De Matteo was a Spanish-sounding name, much as was the name of their home, and the name of the village. The name the village had been given... Perhaps it had had a different one before they had come along...
"Should it?" she asked, deciding to clarify which of these potential questions she was being asked, "Does anything about that bother you?" she added.
The words that Felipe kept locked in his chest did not tumble out. Instead, he chose from them with intense caution, double and triple checking before allowing them to escape through his voice. When he was finally ready, he took a moment to gesture at all of it. Every single thing.
"This is my future," he told her. "There is nothing else for me. Everyone has limits, often through no fault of their own, but mine are imposed by bloodline. However far you look into the future, this is where I'll be. As long as they are here," he indicated the far off village. "So I will be. Does that bother you?"
Zara tried to consider Felipe’s question. She really tried. But she found it strange. She thought she understood the idea of a family legacy. She sort of had one, after all. But there was no direct pressure, she was not the one and only one on whose shoulders their cultural centre rested. She had a place that she could see her life being built around, and didn’t particularly stop to appreciate the difference between ‘can’ and ‘have to’ - or, if she did consider that, it more struck her as Felipe being his serious Crotalussy self. He had talked about traveling as a kid, and right now they were at school and the future seemed far away. So what if he was supposed to run his family’s estate someday? That was some day, not now, and ‘running it’ could mean any number of things. She also wasn’t sure why it should bother her that he, a Mexican, planned to come back and live in Mexico. Sure, people moved and the world was open and diverse, but also a lot of people just stayed close to family. It seemed a perfectly normal suggestion, not one to get upset about.
“I don’t see why it should bother me,” she answered. “Unless it bothers you. Does it?” she tried again.
Felipe didn’t have any better way to express himself because he wasn’t really sure what he was trying to express. “We have come round and round that question,” he said with a small smile.
He wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to bother Zara that he had no future and that if they were going to be friends, his end of that was invariably limited. It also meant that she was not thinking along the lines that his family was undoubtedly thinking upon meeting both Zara and Jessica. They were nice girls, which was good to the De Matteos, and they were fierce young women, which was good to Felipe. Unfortunately, those things didn’t necessarily align well.
He forced himself to put his more sour thoughts aside and focus on the positives. They were together now, and that was the most important. “This summer, I don’t want anything to bother me,” he told her. “So let’s see whether we can bribe a couple of churros from the kitchen.” He offered her his hand. “ You haven’t visited Mexico until you’ve tried authentic Mexican churros.”